"And
these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name shall speak
with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any
deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick
and they shall recover."
Mark 16:17-18
"Are
you guys still playing that crazy snake music?"
Summer.
'03 Release — (see PRESS
for review, SOUNDS
for audio)
Most likely this is irrelevant...
Time
was I could record and mix an entire album in
the space of about a month. In fact, I once nailed a halfway decent one
in a long lost weekend, playing all the instruments -- in a sometimes
shaky manner myself (when it was finished I congratulated myself and went
my separate way.) Granted, it usually took about a year for the songs
to be writ and to work out who was gonna play what and where, but all
told there ended up being about 5 or 6 of these quaint little home made
four track mementos, pushed wide-eyed into the world with a lot of help
from my friends.
Mostly these were recorded on my trusty little Fostex
Portastudio in converted attics and places I imagined to be old farmhouses.
One tune even got recorded in a motel room in south Austin Texas on a
ghetto blaster.
Hopefully,
the relevant stuff begins somewhere
around here...
Enter
the concept of a real breathing/eating/sleeping band. Sometime around
1996 I was out in the Nevada
desert with old Dan Patscot and he kinda dared me to form a group again.
Things have been pretty noisy ever since.
The
Aimless Blades album "Land of Souvenirs" is DONE!!!!. During
the roughly 9 months (significant, eh?) since our guitarist Scott Krueger
helped put this project in motion by allowing us free reign over his studio,
we recorded the basic tracks in an idyllic setting outside of Sheboygan
Falls--thanks to the Jim Richardson family (This is where Scott recorded
his solo cd "One Voice" which is still available.) Later we
physically disassembled the recording gear and reconvened to the closer
locale of Bay View and picked up where we left off, not to mention
here and there -- more or less.
This
entire project was writ, played and recorded by
the band that plays live, under the watchful and opinionated eye/ear of
Dan Franke, Mr. Balance himself.
The rough mix version of the album took me by surprise. It pretty much
sounds like the Aimless Blades on a real good night, and believe me, while
the other nights can be, umm-- "interesting" in a bring
on the lions kind of way, this is what we'd rather float out to the general
public.
Final knob-tweaking done by Scott Finch at Velvet Sky Studio.
"Land of Souvenirs" is available at many fine record stores
in the Milwaukee area, including Atomic Records, Rush Mor Records, and
Rockhaus.
To
receive a copy of the 12-song Land of Souvenirs without leaving
the comfort of your home, send $10 postpaid to:
P.O.
Box 070623, Milwaukee, WI 53207
The
Aimless Blades have also been asked to record a song for the upcoming
Die Kreuzen tribute album for Erosion Records. If you are a fan of Die
Kreuzen, this should be another song we will twist and stomp into our
own language. It may not be possible to cover a band that sounded like
Die Kreuzen so this will be, as our jazzy friends say, an interpretation.
